Wiring a hospital pillow speaker to work with a commercial TV

[Barmed]

I am trying to use a commercial television with a hospital style pillow-speaker. The Hospital Grade TVs have a special port that is added to allow the hospital call-station to be hooked in to control the tv by wire. This special feature adds about $500 to the cost of a tv.

I would like to be able to take the wired signal from the pillow speaker and convert it to an IR signal that could control the TV. I only need to control the Volume, Channels and Power.

Any thoughts on the subject would be appricated. I am a novice at IC circuits. I would like to find a solution that is very inexpensive and easy to build.

 

[crutschow]

The easiest way may be to take the guts of a small universal IR remote such as this **broken link removed** and wire it to the pillow speaker buttons.

 

[Barmed]

Thanks for the idea. I will purchase one and see if I can make it work.

If anyone has any other ideas please share them with me. I want as many options as I can get.